BOOK REVIEW - IT Doesn't Matter

IT Doesn’t Matter.

This book is basically a rebuttal to Carr’s argument that Information technology has become a commodity and therefore no longer a distinguishing factor relative to competitive business strategy.

The book is an interesting read, and a quick one at 120 pages. The authors contend that the original article, IT doesn’t matter, would not have garnered a fraction of the attention that it received, had it not been published in a periodical prestige, as is the Harvard Business Review (HBR).

The HBR has a history of what a non-academic (such as myself) might refer to as alarmist sensationalism, and this is not the first time that an HBR article has been the catalyst for relatively wide-spread academic of poor business decision.

The books authors do a good job of debunking Carr’s intentions, though, as business focused writers, they tend to accept the commoditization of computing technology and subjugate it to “Business Process, Process.”

The book basically devalues the entire IT Industry and suggests that the technology doesn’t matter, just the ways companies implement their business processes using the technology. I’d say far was an idiot, but idiots doing get to write for the Harvard Business Review so instead I’ll suggest that the confusion lies in the vocabulary.

I’m guessing that what Carr really means is that those technologies which have become commodities no longer, in and of themselves, differentiate business advantage.

I agree.

But advances in Software, Hardware, and Network Connectivity DO MATTER.

It is these advances are what not only enable the solutions that DO differentiate business advantage, but these innovations catalyze the solutions that we haven’t thought of yet.

I think this book is an interesting read.

I think Carr’s article is another proof point that there is a great divide between IT in the REAL WORLD and in academics.